Educators have long known that visual aids are an important component to teaching students about various concepts. As computer use has become more common, various applications have been developed that assist educators with creating these visual aids. Video authoring tools, screen recording applications, animation tools, and presentation applications allow users to create visual aids that can be played back during the teaching process to assist students with absorbing the information. However, these tools often require recording the entire set of input at once (e.g., as a video) and playback results in a single output of the combined set of input. Making a change to a part of the visual aid requires either complicated video editing techniques or re-recording of the entire presentation. These tools also record an entire continuum of actions. For example, if a recording has a duration of 10 seconds with inputs at 1 second and 5 seconds, all 10 seconds of input are recorded to capture the inputs at 1 second and 5 seconds. This results in inefficient storage and playback of the visual aid, as all 10 seconds must be recorded despite the fact that the only relevant inputs occur at 1 second and 5 seconds. Through applied effort, ingenuity, and innovation, Applicant has solved many of these identified problems by developing a solution that is embodied by the present invention, which is described in detail below